What is Swing and American Swing?

Question

What is the basic movement of the following:
a) Rock Basic
b) Basic Throw Away
c) Change of Place?

Answer 1

Q. What is Swing? How Much is American?

A. The term swing developed out of the type of jazz music that came out of the 1920's and 1930's, because of the way the music would make people want to swing their bodies to the rhythm of a song (so swinging jazz became swing music). The dance of the same name grew concurrently with the music, specifically The Lindy Hop (as it is known today). Lindy Hop is a fusion of African American dances and European partnered dance that is considered the original american folk dance.

Other dances developed before and concurrent with the Lindy Hop include The Charleston, Balboa, and Collegiate Shag. Later on (in the 40's and 50's) ballroom's restructoring of the dance would lead to the development of East Coast Swing, West Coast Swing, and Jive.

In Europe and the UK, they developed their unique styles of the original dance which includes Boogie Woogie and Ceroc. While the inspiration of these dances rests in America, these dances are exclusively European in origin.

Additionally, the terms "Jitterbug" and "Rock n' Roll" were commonly used to refer to one kind of dance versus another, but there is no specific style of dance associated with either of these terms.



Q. What is the basic movement?

A. The basic movement with any swing dance is the footwork. In the case of East Coast Swing, the basic footwork is 6-counts and is described as "Triple-Step, Triple-Step, Rock, Step". The Lindy Hop is an 8-count basic "Step, Step, Triple-Step, Step, Step, Triple-Step"



Q. What are some moves?

A. There are too many to name, and they are called different things by different teachers, in different parts of the world, so there's really no point in trying to list them.

What I recommend is watching some "how to" videos on youtube, or on this website which has an extensive collection of online Lindy Hop instruction:

http://www.idance.net

Answer 2

(b) and (c) sound like East Coast Swing steps. But I can easly imagine that other forms of Swinf include them too. All swing is American.